Twitter launches Ads API, announces first five partners

New Ads API allows marketers to buy and run ads through HootSuite, Adobe and Saleforce

I was recently talking to someone about the Facebook IPO debacle from last year, and during the course of the conversation, the person said something that I think is totally wrong: Facebook won't last because there is no actual product to sell.

I believe that there is as much product on Facebook and Twitter, and other social networks, as their is on network television: it's all about how much advertising you can sell. It doesn't matter that Facebook has a billion users; if these networks can't get sponsors to give them money to run ads, then they are finished.

Twitter has taken a big step toward making it simpler to advertise on the network with the release of its new Ads API on Wednesday,

The new API is designed make it easier for brands to manage campaigns and get more value out of advertising on Twitter, by allowing them to integrate with its ads platform through a list of API partners that will supply them with better targeting and tools.

Twitter also announced the first five of these partners: HootSuite, Adobe, Saleforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.

Here is how Twitter explains it:

"What this means is that as marketers, you’ll soon have the ability to work with our initial set of Ads API partners to manage Twitter Ad campaigns — and integrate them into your existing cross-channel advertising strategies," April Underwood, Twitter Product Manager, wrote.

"Equally important, users will continue to see the most relevant Promoted Tweets from advertisers. With the Ads API, marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale."

Twitter's API partners began testing the Twitter Ads API in January, and are now beginning to offer Twitter advertising features to a limited number of their clients.

“HootSuite provides our clients with the ability to amplify their owned content, keeping them at the forefront of social advertising opportunities. This process is now a simple and efficient one,” Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuitem said in a statement in a blogpost. “The new integration allows stakeholders in social businesses to instantly buy Promoted Tweets and Accounts from their HootSuite dashboard using our secure, role-based team workflow.”

"For the first time ever, marketers can now manage Twitter advertising at scale alongside all of their existing social marketing programs with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud," Mike Lazerow, chief marketing officer for Salesforce, wrote on the company's blog.

With the integration, he said, brands and agencies will be able to:

Build and execute real time Twitter advertising campaigns

Allow advertisers to more efficiently scale their campaigns on Twitter through innovative workflows

Improve ROI through creative, bid and targeting optimization.

The point of the API, Twitter said, is not to create more advertising, but to make advertising on the network better overall.

"As interest in Twitter has grown, our focus has been on delivering better ads for users, not more ads," Underwood wrote, "We believe our system is working well because users like the ads experience on Twitter. Our system rewards marketers for being good, not for being loud. And this approach encourages ads that are engaging, relevant and useful."

Here is a video from Hootsuite explaining how the integration with Twitter Promoted Products works: